Flower arrangements had arrived by the dozens. Huge frames of every color and kind. These concealed the seats next to the podium and I went back there to hide from the growing crowd.
The mourners were filing in by then. You could hear the din of their conversation and sporadic laughter. The people who attended the funerals of our kind were given to laughter and tears, alcohol and drugs, violent outbursts and deep depression.
It was not unusual for a suicide or two to come in the wake of any event like Theon’s.
They would be well dressed, some scantily so, as everyone would want to be seen as well as pay their respects. Funerals for our crowd were literal celebrations, like the primitive peoples of Europe reveling in life and death before a dour Christian God stripped them of their phallic symbols and painted faces.
I caught glimpses of them through the heavy foliage. The dominant theme was black cloth and cleavage but there was a good deal of pink and scarlet and white. There was a lot of kissing and hugging and holding on. Two film crews took over the back of the chapel. The back row, in front of the cameras, was occupied by a dozen well-known porn directors.
I could see no toddlers or children. There were a few babies in young women’s arms. Maybe one or two of them belonged to Theon. He’d once bragged to me that he’d fathered a child of every race on the planet.
Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony was playing. Lewis knew Theon well enough that he didn’t have to ask me about the music.
I was secure behind that hedge of memorial offerings and yet still had a feeling of belonging. The service was like a going away party for both Theon and me. By then I had definitely decided to use my father’s pistol to kill myself in the creditors’ house after the wake for my husband. The feeling of comradeship and certain death caressed me and the world was right — for once.
“Hey, Deb,” Jude Lyon said. He was wearing a beautifully tailored medium gray suit with a bluish shirt and a scarlet-and-royal-blue tie.
“You look good, Jude.”
“Every time Theon saw this suit he asked for my tailor’s name.”
The little assassin sat down next to me. He grabbed my hand with unexpected strength and said, “I know this must be hard for you.”
“It’s the life we lived.”
“Have you had any more problems?”
That was the first time I realized that I had not called the cops on Ness. He had come into my house and shot at me. But it meant nothing.
“No,” I said. “I think that little talk you had with Coco settled it all.”
“Call me if you have any more trouble,” he said. “That’s the very least I can do.”
I could see in his eyes that Jude was nervous. He had a folded piece of paper gripped in the fingers of his left hand — the speech no doubt.
When I put my free hand on his he shuddered.
“It’s okay, Jude,” I said. “This is what he would have wanted you to do.”
An inquisitive light came into the college-educated killer’s eye.
“Do you understand who I am, Deb?”
“I don’t understand a damn thing, J. All I know is that I have to keep on movin’ forward and for this little stretch of road you and me are on it together.”
I could tell he wanted to say something, just a sentence of agreement or harmony, but instead Jude put his head down and let it bounce in a little nod.
The crowd was getting louder. Bold men and saucy women were sharing memories and despair. The chatter seemed to be an attempt at holding off the silence that was so deep inside that chapel.
The chapel was almost as large as the Rock of Ages House of Worship where my family prayed — but the big church at Day’s Rest was a house of Death, not hope. The only reason people gathered there was because someone had died. There were no Sunday school lessons or weddings in this place. The transient parishioners bellowed and laughed, keened and cried to keep off the extraordinary quietude and the inescapable reality that no proper house of worship could ever really contain.
I closed my eyes and let the sounds of the mourners’ words and laughter wash over me. Again I had the feeling of being far out at sea. I couldn’t make out the individual words and sentences of the babbling gurgle, but I understood the meanings of the rising and lowering octaves.
All this brought a smile to my face.
“Are you ready, Mrs. Pinkney?” Lewis Dardanelle asked.
I opened my eyes, realizing that I had drifted into dreams while waiting for the service. It seemed so perfect that a chuckle escaped my lips.
Dardanelle was shocked and that pleased me. He was so used to being in charge of the final interment. Not only did he orchestrate but he knew every emotion and action that went through the minds of the principals. My nearly joyous ejaculation threw him off his game and that brought out a stronger laugh.
“Do you need a moment to collect yourself?” he asked, still flummoxed by the sudden lightness of my mood.
“Absolutely not.”
Lewis turned away, walked out into the public eye, and took the few steps up to the podium. There was a control board up there that he used to turn the music down, but not off.
The clamor of the mourners lowered to hushed whispers.
The tall coffin banger (as he was sometimes referred to by the women who fucked him in his casket-bed) cleared his throat and the whispering stopped.
“I have been asked to say a few words before the next speakers,” he said in his deep, soft voice. “This is unusual because I almost always represent the funeral home and not the deceased.
“But in this case the family is known to me. Theon Pinkney was a frequent client.” Lewis stopped and showed a rare honest smile. “Not, of course, in his current state. No. Theon took care of his friends. If someone in his trade died penniless and alone, Theon brought them to me and paid for the services. If some poor bereft mother or daughter or spouse could not handle the work it takes to make the transition, Theon was there to lend a hand. He knew as much about this business as I do. He knew about the embalming chemicals and brands of coffins, state and city ordinances, and the many denominations that would and would not speak for the dead.
“This of course refers to Theon only as far as my business life goes. Most of you know me. The only role any, or at least most of you, have seen me fill is the funeral director — the undertaker who takes your loved ones away.”
Lewis stopped there for a good quarter of a minute. I believe a real emotion was passing through him, a memory of someone he was or might have been.
“But Theon knew me in other ways. Sometimes he’d wake up in the middle of the night and call me at the mortuary. ‘Hey, Lew,’ he’d say, ‘what you doin’ down there tonight.’ ”
What shocked me was how much Lewis was able to sound like my husband.
“Often I was deep in my work,” Dardanelle said, continuing, “but some nights I was just sitting around in the office. Theon would come over with a deck of cards and a bottle of... mineral water.”
That got a few laughs. Theon always called cognac his mineral water.
“We’d play for matchsticks and drink, trading stories of what happened at work that day. We both practiced interesting trades.”
More laugher.
“One evening I remember Theon telling me how he had to get on the set and stop a jealous lover from strangling his girlfriend on camera. The man was much bigger and more powerful than Theon, but he wouldn’t let that young girl die...”
Lewis was referring to Tina Bottoms — at least, that was her screen name. Her boyfriend, who went only by the moniker Turk, had gotten it into his head to immortalize them both by killing her on film.
Turk broke Theon’s arm, jaw, and ankle, but my husband saved that girl and helped her move back to Amherst, Massachusetts, where she’d been born.